Dana Perino: I'm Not Going to Lie To You. The Odds of Winning in November are Slim.

Yeah she's right.

No, the polls aren't "rigged." Like Dana, I fell for that bullshit in 2012, and like Dana, I was sickened -- stunned -- to see Obama winning states quickly and states where I thought Romney was ahead (like North Carolina) taking forever to be called.

I think he won NC -- very late in the night, by a slim margin.

But he lost Virginia, Ohio, and Florida by then.

I will say this about the polls, though.

Yes, I believe today's polls.

But I also -- unlike some -- believe the polls from four weeks ago, when Trump surged to a national lead in all polls, sometimes scoring as high as 48% (which is effectively 50% in a four person race).

So what do I make of the polls?

Well, the thing is, as hard as this is for a partisan to conceive of, some people are so lightly engaged with politics that they can hear Trump talk about America First and say "oh yeah, I'm voting for him" and then hear Hillary a week later saying "America First, but only after all other countries" and then say "Oh yeah, she makes sense, I'm with her!"

No one with an investment in politics thinks this way, so we cannot really comprehend the mindset of people so easily blown hither and then thither by the last thing they heard someone say.

But they exist. 10%, 15% -- some people are really this dumb. Or "independent," as these idiots like to call themselves.

Independent of any information of well-considered ideological framework they mean.

Now, trump is down. And this block of idiots is currently with Hillary. But they're not tightly attached to Hillary, just as they weren't strongly attached to Trump when he was at 48%.

An election season is like winter falling on a lake. Each week that passes, more ice forms -- more votes lock in place, now unchangeably fixed. Each week the flow of the water slows a little more.

That means that Hillary didn't just move ahead of Trump among voters who are still flowing back and forth. That means that some fraction of them iced into place and now are permanently with Hillary.

I don't know how many lives Trump has left. The number may well be zero, and it might already be all over.

But I do know this: even if the number of lives he has left is not zero, it's also not a large number like six or seven.

It's a small number, like one. Or two. Or, more likely -- one.

I feel less and less invested in Trump's candidacy, despite the fact that I think it's the most important election I'll vote in (possibly the last), because he's beginning to feel very much like a loser to me, and I have better things to do with my time than dick around on behalf of a loser.

The Republican Party feels very much that way to me too: A collection of losers, losers who cannot win, and who only fight other Republicans because losers know the only people they can beat are other losers.

I'm pretty sure this election is my last election as an actual partisan; I don't fight uphill battles for losers, be they Trump or be they the perpetual corporate losers of the GOP.

There's a huge social penalty to be paid for being a Republican or conservative: And if this gang of losers is just determined to keep losing, for the alleged pristine purity of losing gamely in a gallant effort, then what I'm going to do is declare myself independent, and claim even to be Democrat leaning, because I will no longer pay the social price of being a social outcast for the sake of aligning myself with a group of people who plainly has no interest in actually winning anything.

I'm not in this for the Dungeons and Dragons fantasy politics of it: I'm in it because Hillary terrifies me as a partisan -- Nixon with hotflashes; no thank you -- and I don't want the courts jacked with liberal judges.

And I don't want junior officers who are willing to say the word "terrorism" sidelined and shunted out of the military so that the Democrats have only Democrat generals (as the CIA was politicized in the Democrats' favor, and then the FBI).

On that score, by the way: the Democrats have now won the popular vote in five of the six elections.

What do you think happens when they win six out of seven, then seven out of eight? What do you think the federal bureaucrats start doing when it's pretty obvious the Democrats have a permanent lock on the executive branch?

I think at that point we reach a tipping point, and we'll long for the days when the IRS had to only target a few political organizations, and still felt restrained enough by tradition that they had to lie about it.

I think it'll be open season.

And again, if these stupid loser motherfuckers in this party are determined to lose, and thus expose anyone stupid enough to agitate for them to political persecution by the fully empowered Clinton-Media Complex, then no, I'm not willing to be on that team any more. I'm not willing to risk myself on behalf of losers.

I'm done. Done. If some stupid fucks think there's glory in losing with grace, well, you can do that. I'll be going into survival mode, and survival mode means cutting lose losers that expose you to potential harm.

This also goes to the undisciplined, lazy, childlike Trump.

But there will still be something called the GOP standing after Trump.

I just don't think I'll be part of it. I think I'll actually be actively working for the Democrats, because if the Elite Geniuses of the GOP think the way to win is by putting Hillary into office to teach the lower-class Trump voters a lesson, they're every inch as much my enemies as Hillary.

And if everyone's equally awful, I might as well align myself with the team that's going to be controlling the persecution powers of government for the next 20 years.

posted by Ace at 02:09 PM

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